Consumer acceptance of beef with different levels of marbling

Beef striploin steak disappearance from the retail counters of six stores in three different Canadian provinces was monitored over two consecutive weekends. Beef consumers in three Canadian cities were subsequently interviewed and requested to evaluate steaks representative of four different marbling levels, both visually and organoleptically. There was a clear consumer preference at the point of purchase or visual assessment for steaks with traces of marbling, and discrimination against steaks with modest marbling, and a preference for steaks with slight marbling over steaks with small marbling. However, during organoleptic testing opposite preferences were evident. Therefore, most consumers desire both leanness and palatability in beef. However, these qualities are not necessarily coincidental.     

A Measure of the Value of Marketing in Packaged Goods

This article presents an econometric methodology for use with scannerpanel data based on the multinomial logit model to estimate theconsumer welfare changes that result from changes in marketingactivity. Two applications of the model are presented: the value toconsumers of the introduction of the first plastic ketchup bottle andthe value of various changes to the choice set for yogurt, including abrand replacement, the addition of a new brand and a line extension.Consumer welfare gains associated with the changes, while statisticallysignificant, are very small.     

Consumer Access to Health Care: Basic Right 21st Century Challenge

Today, this country is confronting a crisis in health care of broad and critical dimensions. Dwarfing all others is the issue of the consumer's right to affordable quality comprehensive health care. This paper deals first with the dimension of the health care crisis confronting this country. It considers the major proposals for health care reform. Finally, it examines the role of the consumer movement and of American Council on Consumer Interests (ACCI) in ensuring that the consumer's interest is protected in the current debate on how best to provide equitable and affordable health care to all Americans without regard to the individual's ability to pay.     

RELATED AND UNRELATED DIVERSIFICATION AND THEIR EFFECT ON HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT CONTROLS

This paper examines the link between related and unrelated diversification and human resource management (HRM) controls. The paper presents a model proposing that the type of corporate (macro) controls used by related or unrelated firms implies a relative emphasis on either flexibility or fit among HRM practices in that related firms emphasize flexibility and unrelated firms emphasize fit. This emphasis on flexibility or fit, in turn, has implications for the use of HRM (micro) controls such as clan, behavior, and outcome controls such that related firms exhibit the use of all three types of HRM controls, while unrelated firms exhibit a relative emphasis on the use of outcome controls. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Money Attitudes,Credit Card Use,and Compulsive Buying among American College Students

The consumer culture has evolved into one of the most powerful forces shaping individuals and societies (Roberts and Sepulveda 1999 a, b). The desire to become a member of the consumer culture appears to be universal (Droge and Mackoy 1995). Changing attitudes toward money are an important catalyst behind the spread of the consumer culture. Money is important—especially to American college students who have been raised in a credit card society where debt is used freely (Ritzer 1995). Schor (1998) believes that access to easy credit is one of the causes of overspending. Using a causal modeling approach, the present study investigated the role money attitudes and credit card use play in compulsive buying within a sample of American college students (see Figure 1). Findings suggest that the money attitudes powerprestige, distrust, and anxiety (Yamauchi and Templer 1982) are closely related to compulsive buying and that credit card use often moderates these relationships. Study results have important public policy, marketing, and research implications.     

La Femme Media Inc.: Identifying and Managing Audit Engagement Risk Factors

La Femme Media Inc. (“La Femme”) is a privately owned Canadian publishing company that produces several small periodicals and a popular women’s monthly magazine. The company’s founder and majority shareholder has announced his plans to retire in the upcoming year with plans to sell his 80 percent share of the company to a minority shareholder who has not taken an active role in the business. Students are required to take on the role of the audit senior and draft a planning memo for the partner outlining the risks associated with this engagement and analyzing all significant audit and accounting issues.     

Accounting for a Shift in Term Structure Behavior with No-Arbitrage and Macro-Finance Models

This paper examines a shift in the dynamics of the term structure of interest rates in the United States during the mid-1980s. We document this shift using standard interest rate regressions and using dynamic, affine, no-arbitrage models estimated for the pre- and post-shift subsamples. The term structure shift largely appears to be the result of changes in the pricing of risk associated with a "level" factor. Using a macro-finance model, we suggest a link between this shift in term structure behavior and changes in the dynamics and risk pricing of the Federal Reserve's inflation target as perceived by investors.     

The Distribution of Household Health Expenditures in Australia*

Out‐of‐pocket health expenditures in Australia are high in international comparisons and have been growing at a faster rate than most other health costs in recent years. This raises concerns about the extent to which out‐of‐pocket costs have constrained access to health services for low income households. Using data from the ABS Household Expenditure Survey 2003–2004, we model the relationships between health expenditure shares and equivalised total expenditure for categories of out‐of‐pocket health expenditures and analyse the extent of protection given by concession cards. To allow for flexibility in the relationship we adopt Yatchew's semi‐parametric estimation technique. This is the first detailed distributional analysis of household health expenditures in Australia. We find mixed evidence for the protection health concession cards give against high out‐of‐pocket health expenditures. Despite higher levels of subsidy, households with concession cards do not have lower out‐of‐pocket expenditures than non‐cardholder households except for the highest expenditure quintile. Cards provide most protection for GP out‐of‐pocket expenditures.